


in the land of gods and monsters, i was human. [hiatus]

by mysidibule (dragonflame3333)



Series: confessionals [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: (i rly like calling it the bad time route), Asphyxiation, Depression, Disembowelment, Eye Trauma, Gender-neutral Reader, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mild Gore, No Mercy Run, Obsessive Behavior, Other, Self-Hatred, Sins and Regret, Somewhat, Vomiting, altho reader definitely is, bad time run, i forgot to tag that when i first posted this whoops, im sorry if you came here for skeleboning bc there's none of that, sans is Not Interested, there's no actual vomiting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 23:13:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5183255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonflame3333/pseuds/mysidibule
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>this all could have been avoided if sans was a little bit more open and you were a little bit less fucked-up and determined.</p><p>but that would have been asking too much, right?</p><p>(in which a no mercy reader reflects upon their many transgressions during a seemingly endless final boss fight)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. an introduction to the human condition

**Author's Note:**

> born from my own personal guilt, and hence written in the context of my playthroughs, and a little more.  
> fun fact: the death counts in this are, for the most part, directly taken from my own runs.
> 
> frisk doesn't exist in this continuity, probably. chara is a little bit vague, but even if they do exist, it's not them calling the shots. it's you. it was always you. your sins are your own. take responsibility.

Two silhouettes stand against a backdrop of blinding light. 

You feel like you could stay in this golden hallway forever. No, forever’s come and gone; all that’s left is you and him and here. All you can do is lunge ever forward, ever towards him as he side-steps your advances. There is nothing else. You don’t know if there ever will be anything else, or if the two of you will be locked in this dance forever, following the same steps for eternity. (Despite his words, you think maybe that’s not so bad.)

Here, time and place are both foreign concepts. You’re not sure if you can even consider yourself you anymore. Is it always the same you respawning at that shadowed doorway, or does someone else take your place every time? One version of you left to rot in the emptiness of death, while another is created to try again–an endless cycle of death and rebirth, born from the ashes of monsters and determination. Are you really the same person you were at the start of all this?

No, you suppose not. You used to be a whole lot worse at evading his attacks, for one.

An infinite number of yous, an infinite number of Sanses, an infinity of infinities, and yet…

It’s always the same.

“It’s a beautiful day outside. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming…”

You’ve heard this all before, so many times you’ve memorized it. You’ve memorized all of it, up until he starts dropping hints about a special attack. (Then, without fail, he slams you to the ground until your bones shatter and your Soul splinters and there's nothing left to do but reload.)

His words go by maddeningly slow. Each syllable is drawn out to maximum length, as if his speech was going by letter by letter rather than in whole words. From your perspective, it almost feels like he’s taunting you with his deliberateness. (You bite your lip, feel the skin tear, taste the metallic tang of blood. You are so tired.)

He might be. You wouldn’t put it past him.

“on days like these, kids like you…”

You tense, bracing yourself for his attack.

Despite the sheer number of times you’ve faced it, he still manages to get you from time to time. You wonder if that’s a testament to his strength or if you’re just that bad. Probably the latter, you decide; after all, he is the easiest enemy. If you could only touch him…

His left eye bursts with citrine-cyan light, and the atmosphere crackles with the force of magic; bones materialize out of thin air to tear you asunder–but you’re already off the floor, throwing yourself through the air, the current of your Soul tugging your body in and around the lattices of his attack. You weave up and down, side to side, without a scrape. Seamlessly, you sprint and duck and dodge the beams of light sent to incinerate you. One wrong move, and ash’d be all that’s left of you.

You know the pattern. You’ve seen it enough times. Sometimes he plays with his words, tries to throw you off, and sometimes it works, but ultimately it’s all the same. Your moves, his moves… They’re all just variations upon a theme that you’ve spent plenty of time picking apart.

Just before it’s your turn, he looks you dead in the eye. Your heart skips a beat.

“here we go.”

It tires him more to bend the rules and dodge your attacks than it does for him to attack you, so you go on the offensive most of the time, only heal when your body is hardly in any position to keep fighting, when your limbs are hanging limply off your body and there’s swathes of crimson spread across the golden tiles. It helps that you’ve stopped paying attention to what he’s saying, for the most part; why bother when you’ve got it down almost verbatim? (You are so tired.)

“that’s your fault, isn’t it?”

“you can’t know how this feels. knowing one day, without warning…”

“or is that just a poor excuse for being lazy? hell if i know.”

“i can’t afford not to care anymore.”

Words blend into words; bones blur into walls. Skip, skip, skip! Jump, jump, jump! Your breath is starting to come in harder. Your heart is pounding hard against your chest. You were never the most athletic person before this, and despite how much experience you might gain from your many reloads, your actual physical body doesn’t change from the you at the save point. If you weren’t mainly powered through your Soul and determination, if monsters weren’t fragile beings formed of magic and dust, you would never have made it this far. Instead, you ignore your body’s limits–the beating of your heart, the breathlessness, the burning in your muscles. You keep attacking, knowing what he’s going to say, knowing he’s going to dodge, knowing it won’t do anything–he can’t keep at it forever, he can’t keep at it forever, he can’t

(But you can, and he knows it, and he keeps going anyway. Maybe you’re not so different after all.)

The world is little more than a confused mess of white, yellow, blue, black–

–

–

and red.

How careless of you; you slip up. A stray bone smashes against your skull, you lose your balance, and suddenly you’re plunging into a sea of bones, and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts and all you can do is hurt and roll and move, for fuck’s sake, _move_. Your eyes are fuzzy and unfocused. You still can’t seem to catch your breath. Everything feels too hot, too tight; you’re suddenly claustrophobic, a trapped consciousness slowly leaking out of a too-small body. Blood, your blood, drips onto the floor, and you hope, vaguely, you don’t slip in that too. It’s thick and red and sticky like the ketchup Sans drinks, and you imagine, briefly, his teeth on your skin, his grin stained scarlet. 

It hurts. 

It hurts.

You feel exhilarated.

You’d thought you’d lost your perception of pain a long time ago. In another life, in a place not far in distance but time. As you died again and again at the hands of a man who desperately wished he didn’t have to kill you. 

You’re straining yourself now. You jump off a platform with a bit too much haste, and as you hit the ground, your shoulder twists out of its socket with a disgustingly familiar pop. You don’t flinch. You don’t scream. It doesn’t even bother you. Instead, you keep moving, keep dodging, wait for the right moment to pop it back into place and shove a piece of snow down your throat. Its cold numbs you all the way down. 

( _you made a snowman really happy._ )

A little bit of life comes back to you after a moment, but the bleeding doesn’t stop. You kind of miss the bandage, if only as a fashion statement.

He’s brought out the skulls again, and it’s bright, it’s too bright, it’s too much for your aching head, where are the goddamn blinds? The light outside is reflected onto the seemingly spotless tiles and there’s sunspots everywhere and you’re wondering how there’s sunlight when you’re underground (that’s obvious, asshole, it’s magic, like everything else). The room is superheated as Sans sets off explosion after explosion; everything is a haze from a mix of heat, light exposure, and blood loss. You’re half-tempted to down another snowball the next chance you get, but as luck would have it, you never make it that far.

You realize it’s over when you hear a blast go off point-blank, and then there’s nothing but the heat and the ringing in your ears and it’s like your entire Soul’s been dropped straight into a vat of boiling acid.

His pain is different, a kind that you know in your bones you will never get used to. It’s more than just hurting. It’s a thousand needles being pressed individually into your skin; it’s the countless tiny impacts of a sea being emptied, drop by drop, between your eyes; it’s soft, pure, white dust, coating your feet, your hands, your face, until it’s filled your lungs and you can’t breathe–

You feel your sins crawling on your back. 

Against Sans, even a small scrape can mean death. But against you, even death is just a reload.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beginnings should be short and sweet, right?
> 
> i'm kidding. i actually have a lot of trouble writing works of any length because i'm extremely anal about wording. i reckon this will work out to about 10k by the time i'm done. including this, i have ~5.3k written now, some of it edited.  
> next chapter: more alliteration, more anaphora, more parentheses, more direct quotes, more hypothetical questions. how fun!


	2. contemplations in the dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter dedicated to everyone who only went down that bloody path for _sans_.

The next thing you know, everything is black and you’re suspended within a galaxy of nothingness. You hear Asgore’s voice echoing across timelines–telling you to keep trying, telling you to stay determined, telling you you’re the hope of monsters and humans. 

(What a fucking joke.)

You close your eyes–nothing changes except the sensation of eyelids drawn lightly across them–and contemplate how pathetic it is that you couldn’t even get to the real battle. And after doing so well to begin with, too; didn’t even get hit during the opening attack. Perhaps you’ve gotten cocky with too much experience. Maybe you’re just tired. How many tries has it been at this point? You’ve lost track.

( _don’t think i’ll be able to count very well from here. keep count for me, okay?_ )

(That’s a lie. You know the exact number of times you’ve died, and it’s 75.)

It was bound to happen, you suppose. There’s only so long one can keep straining a body to its limits before their mind, too, begins to lose its edge. (You are so tired.)

Your determination is still strong as ever, but maybe it’s best if you take a break for now? Just for a bit, to take a breather, collect yourself, ponder existence, etc. etc. Figure out what you’ve been doing right and what mistakes you need to correct.

(This whole timeline is a mistake, a niggling voice at the back of your mind whispers, but you slam the proverbial door shut on that one so fast, it barely has the time to draw its fingers back from the doorframe.)

(You know it’s wrong. That doesn’t mean you’re going to stop.)

You stretch your limbs out into the darkness around you. Getting comfortable, as it were. It’s the first time you’ve allowed yourself to simply sit and feel in ages. 

Your progress is pathetic.

You feel like shit. 

It’s strangely comforting.

It’s vaguely reminiscent of something long ago, something you might have forgotten. Lying on the ground, regarding your failures as you stare into the void. In another life, in a place not far in distance but time.

You know you’ll never truly forget everything you’ve done. You can act as cavalier as you want, but no matter how much you compartmentalize it all, every decision you’ve made will always come back to haunt you in some way or another. You're a fucking murderer. There's no changing that. Even without a hero to stop you or a judge to sentence you, you have a feeling that karma would have wrapped you up in its threads eventually. And barring that, you yourself would have taken up the reins of executioner. 

You wear your guilt openly, the locket a noose around your neck. The scars of your regret are not so obvious.

You pretend to forget. It doesn’t work. 

That’s one of the (many) things you envy Sans for: he knows the facts of the matter–knows what you’ve done, what you’re capable of doing; knows he’s powerless to stop it; knows his existence is nothing more than a tiny roadblock that you will eventually crush–but he did not live through this. Sans is tired, but not through repetition. He does not remember. He does not have to suffer the weight of his many indiscretions, a yoke bearing an impossibly heavy burden. He does not have the power to reload and reset, and therefore none of the temptations and haunts that come with it. The only friend Sans has ever killed is you, in a reality where you were never friends. And that–that wasn't his fault. The only one to blame for that is you.

( _we’ll just end up right back here, without any memory of it, right?_ )

Sans cannot save. He can only be swept aside by the tide of time, an ineffectual figure who must content himself putting together the pieces of countless futures past.

That’s melancholy in its own right, you suppose.

You wonder what it’s like to be rewound. To realize that you’d lived another life, in another world where dreams had become reality, and prophecy had come to pass in the most spectacular way possible. That one day, you’d woken up, and all your experiences, all your successes and your failures and your joys and your sorrows had been taken away–and you hadn’t even been left with your memories. What a shame, you think. To have gone through all that effort for nothing... how wasteful.

( _you can’t know how this feels._ )

What would it feel like, learning how many what-could-have-beens had come to pass and then… simply not, erased at the whim of an uncaring Soul with more power than they deserve? (Yeah, that’s _you_ , asshole.)

What would you do, in Sans’ situation?

Tell everyone you know, only to be scoffed at, your findings dismissed as yet another bad joke?

Try to go back yourself and fix everything that should never have gone wrong?

( _i stopped trying to go back a long time ago._ )

Desperately search for a way to break the cycle?

Laugh? Scream? Kill yourself? 

( _it makes it kind of hard to give it my all._ )

Stop caring?

( _just give up. i did._ )

It really makes you wonder: how bad do things have to get before a man disillusioned with reality, to the point of absolute apathy, will step in and take a stand? How dire the consequences, how high the stakes, how terrible the villain? (You again, asshole.)

You did all this, for what? Entertainment? Satisfaction?

You didn’t want to kill your friends. (But you did.)

All you wanted was to see, to know.

Your desire is not to crack the shell of this world and break free, like Flowey, but to coil within it, pressing yourself tightly within all of its nooks and crannies. You love this world. You love everyone within it. You were all friends at some point, right? Those bonds don't just fade. There's a reason why even those with no knowledge of the timelines still get a vague sense of deja vu when you meet them after a reset. You're sure your love shows in your dedication: you’ll do whatever it takes to learn everything. You grasp the earth within your clenched fist, clutching as tightly as you can without it shattering. You can’t truly know a person until you’ve seen them under pressure, after all. Your job is simply to place them in situations where they can show their true colors. There's no malice in your actions, only childlike love and curiosity. You want to understand everyone as fully as you can, see who they are inside and out. It's simply an unfortunate truth that you have to kill something before you can dissect it.

And if you throw all you have at them and they still refuse to be fazed, all you can do is up the ante and see what cards they have to play.

In the end, it all comes back to him. 

Sans is easily the most interesting person you’ve ever met. He hides himself beneath a veneer of informality and apathy and shitty puns, but it’s always been obvious he’s more than just a comically lazy skeleton. Not that those aren’t a part of him, too; coping with crippling depression through deflection and bad jokes? Ah, so relatable–but there’s always been something beneath the surface, a knock-knock joke leading to a cliche riddle hinting at a greater, deeper enigma.

How unfair, Sans. Having all these secrets and not sharing them with you, despite what a good kid you’d been. Despite how hard you’d tried to save everyone, how dedicated you’d been to making friends with as many people as possible, how adamantly you’d refused to hurt anyone, even if they were intent on killing you.

(Well… for the most part. Everyone makes mistakes. And you’d reloaded immediately after, so it’s not like she stayed dead for long.) 

(Somewhere, Flowey would be laughing at you if he wasn't so goddamn scared.) 

After all you’d been through, didn’t you deserve at least an explanation? Weren’t you good enough friends for that? Didn’t you (practically single-handedly) guide the monsters out of the underground and into the light? All the times you died, all the pain you suffered… Wasn’t that enough? What’s a secret between friends, right? You should let your skeletons out of the closet more often, buddy! Have some compassion, they must be getting pretty bonely in there! 

How embarrassing. You’ve been telling lies, and not even _well_. You're so transparent; yours is not just an academic curiosity. You are not a quantum physicist meddling with the variables of reality. The simple urge to know and complete–omniscience, for lack of a better word–was not originally your goal with the resets. In truth, you could probably live without the knowledge of Papyrus’ hopeful last words or Undyne’s determined last stand; without the image of your hands, caked with fine white powder, and the sensation of looking in the mirror and seeing a reflection that is not your own.

What is it you’re really after?

(Take a wild fucking guess.)

From that very first encounter in the woods, you’d learned Sans was more than he seemed. It was subtle, like everything else about him, but he didn’t quite fit in with the other monsters. Sure, he was on friendly terms with everyone, but wasn’t that strange enough, someone familiar with just about everyone in the underground? When you were in school, you hadn’t even known the names of all your classmates, and yet here Sans is, personally acquainted with the entire population of monsterkind.

The only thing you’ve seen him eat, or drink, as it may be, is ketchup, and while you suspect he’s partial to other condiments, as evidenced by the array at his guard post, there’s no way to tell if he includes anything solid in his diet. (Well, it’s not as if monster food has much substance, anyway.) What irks you about it, though, is that first rendezvous at Grillby’s. He’d ordered two fries, one for each of you. His plate had remained untouched. Why?

And despite allegedly being the biggest lazybones this side of Mt. Ebott, he always seemed to be in the right place at the right time. When Undyne was chasing you… when you were making your way through the Hotlands… He was always a step ahead of you, often in the most literal sense; you think back to Snowdin and his disappearing/reappearing act at the bottom of the cliff. 

( _haven’t i done a great job protecting you?_ )

The more you learned about Sans, the more curious you became. Nothing seemed to add up. He was in places he shouldn’t have been, knew things he shouldn’t have known, had powers that you could scarcely fathom, and yet he’d never fought you, not once.

( _you know what would have happened if she hadn’t said anything?_ )

(You think of your 74 deaths.)

You’d wondered, what is he capable of? How much does he know? Who is Sans the skeleton, really? 

That first time… You remember a long walk down a gray path. Voices telling you of times past and times to come. It felt like the end was approaching, and not just death. (After all, that had never stopped you.) You remember stepping through a shadowed doorway. Light cascading through arched windows. Your feet sliding against smooth tiles. The hall was silent, save for the sound of your footsteps, which echoed up and down the walls. Everything was still, disturbed only by you. It made you almost want to hold your breath. What a beautiful day. You remember thinking that this place looked stunningly serene, as if it were removed from time itself. (That gets a laugh out of you now.)

It was quiet. It was so quiet. 

You remember realizing you were not alone. You remember realizing you had never been alone. 

Bells chimed. Once... twice… You felt the sound reverberate in your very Soul.

You raised your gaze from the gold of the floor.

In front of you stood a hooded figure, wreathed in light. The brilliance blinded you; they were little more than an outline of black. Their presence seemed predetermined; almost like fate, if you had believed in any destiny other than the one you made. This felt like the culmination of all your efforts, as if the consequence of every action you’d taken on this journey was being considered. As if they knew all you’d done; as if they’d been there the entire way. It reminded you of something else, of the feeling of being watched in an empty forest, of a shadow standing close enough to touch; a memory far in neither distance nor time. And as the figure opened its mouth to speak, you caught a flash of ivory; after that, there was only the sound of a familiar baritone voice.

“Now. You will be judged.”

You’d never heard Sans talk like that before. It was as if he was a different person, and at first you were too enraptured in his words to consider what that meant.

However, it dawned on you soon enough. What he'd said... it was time for your judgment. Sans was to be your judge–from the looks of it, had intended to from the very start. He had watched you through your journey, been there every step of the way. There was a clout to his words that you couldn’t describe (that you still can’t, for some inexplicable reason). As you recalled his presence at every interval and listened to the manner–solemn, somber, sure–in which he delivered the speech, you realized there was no one more suited to the task of watcher and arbiter. There was so much more to Sans than even you, inquisitive as you were, could have expected.

There was a pause before he said his next words, and you knew even before he began that they weren't scripted. 

“but you,” he started, and lowered his hood. “you never gained any LOVE.”

Sans looked at you, straight in the eyes, and he was smiling like he always does, but that time it was real, it was real and it was pure and it was aimed at you and–

“you never gained LOVE, but you gained love.”

Your heart stopped. The breath went out of your lungs.

“so as long as you hold on… so as long as you do what’s in your heart… i believe you can do the right thing.”

He closed his eyes.

That was the moment you knew you and this world were well and truly fucked.

He would’ve taken back his words a thousand times over if he could see what you’ve done now. 

You think maybe you’ve died too many times to remember what fear and pain feel like. (The normal kind, of blood and guts and hurt--not Sans', of guilt and regret and sin.)

After all, you’re dead right now, right? This isn’t too bad. For one, you’re getting a lot of introspection done. Plenty of relaxing and philosophizing. You never have time to do that when you’re kicking around up there. (Or… down there, considering it’s underground. But you sure as hell would never have ended up in heaven, so even low is probably high up here. You don’t know. Being in limbo fucks with your senses something fierce.) 

Here, no one insults you but yourself. No one judges you but yourself. No one hates you but yourself. There’s no one here for you to hurt but yourself. You can’t fuck up; there’s nothing left to fuck up. There’s nothing at all. This nowhere between life and death... it’s honestly a wonderful place.

(You miss having friends.)

( _i mean, look at yourself. you haven’t died a single time._

 _hey, what’s that look supposed to mean? am i wrong?_ )

When you’d asked Papyrus what it’d be like to spar with Sans, he’d given you this look that said, why would you even ask that? And proceeded to say roughly that:

“WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO FIGHT SANS? MY BROTHER IS THE WEAKEST MONSTER I KNOW. WOULDN’T YOU RATHER SPAR WITH ME, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, BRIGHTEST (POTENTIAL) HOPE OF THE ROYAL GUARD?”

And when you’d asked the man himself, he’d only shrugged and said, “what my brother said.”

Okay, you’d said to yourself. Okay, what do I have to do to get this skeleton to spill his guts?

In the case of Sans, the one thing you’d counted on as definite was his relationship with Papyrus. His love and admiration for his brother is genuine. That had been obvious from the start. 

You were friends. You didn’t want to do it. (But you did.)

And yet… Even after you’d killed Papyrus, after you’d reduced his beloved brother to nothing but a tattered red scarf and a pile of dust, white as the snow and pure as his heart–even then, he’d remained smiling. He’s never stopped. Not then; not now. You’ve butchered almost every monster under this godforsaken rock, and his grin has remained unfaltering, though the spark in his eyes falters. (The sight of his grinning skull, eye sockets devoid of light, still twists your innards, fills you with a visceral dread, gut-wrenching and _heady_.)

So you’d kept going. You’d slaughtered everything that stood in your way. Entire families had fallen to you. You'd begun the long process of killing your emotions, and everything else besides. You'd paved the road out of the underground in white, and yet…

It wasn’t enough.

( _i like to take it easy, you know?_

_…that’s a joke._

_this is what happens when people like me take it easy._ )

You were already filthier than comprehension. How much worse could it possibly get? How much worse did it have to get? Fucking hell, Sans, you'd killed his _brother_. Show a little bit more emotion, would you? Surely someone with the gall to murder someone as gentle, as innocent, as unequivocally blameless as Papyrus was beyond redemption. Surely that would warrant retribution! And even if you hadn't crossed that line, scarcely anyone would have blinked twice if Sans had killed you from the start. After all, wasn't the future of monsterkind at stake? Was one measly human Soul worth leaving an entire population of people to slowly wither and die? Was a promise made to someone he'd never even met truly that important?

All that dust... all your guilt... it chained you to purpose. It demanded, if not vindication, at least results--an answer to show for what you'd done. You had to gain something from all this. Because if not, what did your friends die for? For what reason had you killed them all? 

You weren't far enough, but you were too far to simply stop.

(You thought it'd be easier the second time around.)

( _I BELIEVE IN YOU! YOU CAN DO A LITTLE BETTER!_ )

(You were wrong.)

And here you are, accordingly, after much trial and error. 

95 fatalities later.

A part of you wonders if all of this was worth it. All of you knows it wasn’t. Because despite all you’ve put this world through, you still don’t understand a damn thing.

Oh, sure, you get his attitude. You’ve very acquainted with his powers. You’re definitely satisfied as to the question of what he’s capable of. He’s told you why he never battled you, which is likely the same reason why he’d been everywhere and everywhen helping you.

But how? Who does he mean when he says “our reports”? How can he track all your resets, despite not carrying memories over between timelines? Why is he the only one with the ability to fuck with the space-time continuum the way he does and how did he get this way? And the most important question, the one tying all these threads together: what the hell happened in his past?

(You wonder if that’s how he feels every time you reset and he’s forced to ask himself, just what happened?)

It really shouldn’t be this difficult. After all, if he just took off his shirt, you’d be able to see right through him, right?

You’ve never been able to get him to do that either, though, and like everything you’ve failed at, not for lack of trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> originally, i was going to upload this chapter along with the first so that you all would know what sort of introspective garbage you're getting into, but then i thought about splitting it up into parts. that didn't end up happening, so enjoy your 3k chapter while it lasts. next one isn't going to be nearly as long.


	3. conviviality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick warning: decided to bump the rating up, just in case? i consider this pretty mild, but then again, my favorite manga is tokyo ghoul. there's not really vomiting, like the tags say, but there did end up being disembowelment. so, uh, that's a thing.

You reload. Lucky number 7(5), huh?  


Your head is clear enough to put up one hell of a fight.

...Of course, this means nothing when your opposition is never there to _receive_ your opposition. Damn him and his dodging. And his skulls, too--you swing-miss-step-turn- _jump!_ onto a moving platform and just barely avoid being blasted into hell by his return attack. It's a fluid cycle of sensation and movement and the blood pumping furiously through your veins, hot and fast and energizing. You leap across platform to platform, your body lead and your Soul leaden with cobalt. His magic tingles hot-and-cold, or maybe you're just feverish. Your breath is coming in short pants now, and your chest feels like it's burning. You lunge at empty air, fall back, repeat the process. It's half mechanical, half wretchedly organic; each sensation is vivid, and yet they all blur together into one, long action. A single ribbon of motion, winding and unwinding around you and Sans, twisting you together until it's hard to tell where your processes end and his begin.

Then, there's a lull.

The room is, once again, stifling. It's his turn, and you appear to be at a stalemate. Sans hasn't hit you, not once. You've returned the favor, much to your frustration.

"that being said..."  


This is the part where he offers a truce. You've never accepted it, obvious trap that it is.

"there's a glimmer of a good person inside of you." 

( _Lie._ )

"someone who, in another time, might have even been... a friend?"

( _Truth._ )

"do you remember me?"

( _I do, but you don't._ )

You wipe sweat from your brow and study Sans. He's sweating harder than you are, despite his status as a skeleton and therefore, a being decidedly _lacking_ in sweat glands. He mirrors your action, dabbing at it with his right jacket sleeve; aware of your gaze, he catches your eye, winking. His smile is too wide, too perfect. It's obvious he's lying. He'll only kill you if you let your guard down. You know this.

But something is different within you this time. Perhaps it's the spark of curiosity, dulled after replay upon replay, newly revitalized after your time alone. Every other time he'd extended his hand, you'd either been too hyped up--on adrenaline and excitement and fury, white hot fury at his evasion, at his judgment, at the damage he'd dealt to you without ever once being hit himself--to take him up on the offer, or, conversely, too tired and dead-set on finally ending this to try something new. _Next time_ , you'd said, always, _next time_ _, I'll see what happens._

Well, this is a 'next time', isn't it? 

What've you got to lose?

(Your life is nothing at this point. You couldn't stay dead if you tried.)

You shrug. "Alright." You set down your knife; kick it away, even; listen to it rattle against the floor. "Sure." You smile sheepishly, raise your hands face-level. "I give." 

For once, Sans doesn't even try to hide his surprise. 

"...you're sparing me?" 

The expression on his face is hard to describe. It's a confused mixture of great shock, moderate elation, slight mistrust, and, if you look closely enough, an almost imperceptible tinge of smugness. Still, even if it's fake, Sans is smiling at you in a way that has your knees weak with nostalgia and fondness. He looks at you like he's ready to forgive you, trust you, love you, if you're willing to have him. You just have to take that first step. (His eyes are crinkled _just so_. How does he do it without skin?) Gazing at that face, you feel like you've been friends for forever. It reminds you of another life, in a place not far in distance but time. Your chest is tight. Your nostrils are burning slightly. It hurts, and you're not sure if that's good or bad.

"i know how hard it must be... to make that choice. to go back on everything you've worked up to," Sans says, and you swallow hard. 

(You can't stop. You have to keep going, moving forward. Don't look too closely at what you've done or your determination will 

_destroy_

you.)

Your fists clench tightly, along with your guts.

You suddenly feel the urge to vomit. You taste acid at the back of your throat, chunks of partially-dissolved food surging up your esophagus. It's disgusting. You're disgusting. You're sick; you're going to be sick. Your fingers itch to tear your rotten entrails out with blunted nails, fling them as far away as God permits. (As if God would permit.) You're ready to rip out your still-beating heart, pulsing and pulpy--to watch it flail about on slick tiles, until you crush it beneath a white-encrusted heel. You want to rid yourself of this disgusting feeling. You want to clean yourself, to be absolved of your sins. You want to be thrown into a crucible and put through fire until you're nothing but pure, clean ash. You want to be purified.

(That's right; choke on your sins. But don't think that gets you off the hook. Penance isn't that simple, asshole. That much pain is not _enough_.)

"You have no idea," you say mildly, and give a small half-shrug. (Your smile tightens. He notices.)

"well, maybe not," Sans acquiesces with a wink. "i just want you to know... i won't let it go to waste."

Then he spreads his arms, wide and welcoming as his smile. He's all bone, yet somehow his embrace looks like the comfiest place you could possibly be.

"c'mere, pal."  


You know what will happen if you continue forward. Somehow, it doesn't really bother you. Not much does, at this point.

(Besides, you'll get a free hug out of it. Which, to be honest, interests you more than you'd ever admit.)

You go.

Sans closes his arms around you, and you press your face against the bones of his neck and breathe in, deeply. It smells dry, but good. Homey. There's no feeling better than this. You want to crawl inside his ribcage and live there forever. You want to curl up in the soft warmth of his jacket forever. It's so goddamn _comfortable_ that for a moment, you forget your purpose. What did you wait so long for? What was so important that you couldn't stop to stay like this? You'd been so determined...

The unmistakable hum of magic starts up beside your ear. Sans doesn't move an inch. You feel, rather than see, his left eye go electric.

There's a sick squelching sound, and the bones of his arms are a _cage_ _;_ you feel his jacket go damp with blood. It _hurts_. Everything hurts so _fucking much_ that for the first time in a long time, you're overwhelmed by it. You open your mouth to scream, but all that comes out is a moist cough. It tastes like disappointment, sudden and bitter. ( _die already,_ you scream at yourself, _reset reset reset just fucking die die die die d i e)_ You cough and cough and cough, and you'd meant for a proper death rattle, all dramatic-like, but it comes out muted and faint; there's too much fluid in your lungs to make much noise. The bones embedded in your back shift, and you feel your stomach drop, literally, along with the rest of your organs. 

Your feet are warm, wet, _sticky_.

Sans finally lets go, and you sink to your knees in mess, boneless (or quite the opposite, as it happens).

(Well, would you look at that? You got what you wanted. Sans is such a generous fellow.)

(As of this moment, you're too busy choking on your own blood and bile to register it, which is a shame. It might've made the experience a bit more enjoyable.)

You hear, dimly, the sound of laughter overhead. Sans is shouting something above the din of magic that you can't quite make out; it's too loud for your brain to process in its dying state. You're sure it's something hilarious. Sans always was a comic. You liked that about him. You just wish he'd let you in on the joke. It's no good to leave out friends, right?

As everything goes black, you do manage to hear one last thing:

"if we're really friends... you won't come back."


	4. hedera et lycoris

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter absolutely kicked my ass, which is why it took a while to post this. I thought it was done at least twice before it yelled at me, _not enough_ , and i'm still not entirely satisfied with it, but y'all deserve an update.  
> edit: forgot to add the chapter title. whoops.
> 
> the onesided sans/reader is pretty strong here. also, there's choking. jsyk.

You contemplate his words. Maybe Sans is right. Maybe it _is_ time to quit. 75 tries is a lot, after all. Resolve is a rare and a difficult thing to have. No one would blame you if you gave up. You're sure you've known plenty of people who would have lost it a long time ago if they were in your shoes. 

It'd be nice, too. You'd die knowing that someone considered you a friend. Even if your death was at his hands.

Why not give up?

  


...Who the hell do you think you're kidding?

You reload.

  


"friendship... it's really great, right?"

You laugh. It's dry and humorless, like dust. His grin widens, if that's possible. Sans must think you're agreeing with him, which isn't too far from the truth. 

It felt... great, for lack of a better word, to suppose, even for that single second, that someone cared about you. That someone could forgive you, was willing to offer a hand and a hug and companionship. That hug had tasted like honey, cloying and saccharine and irresistible even when you knew it'd end in aches and decay. (You'd always had one hell of a sweet tooth.)

Now that _that_ fantasy's ended, you're left homesick for a home you don't have--you'd burnt it down with your own two hands, conscious and enthusiastic.

(At least Undyne had friends to stay with. You, on the other hand, have to settle for the wet and the cold. Truly, you are reaping the benefits of your reaping.)

"let's quit fighting."

His speech is somewhat abbreviated. Has he realized you've been down that route already? Sans always was good at reading the signs; he has to be. You don't blame him for trying, though. He got you good that last time, even if it was a set-up from the start.

You purse your lips as you pretend to consider a cease-fire, then shrug as casually as you can manage. Affecting a nonchalant air seems to work for both of you. No use giving the other more material to work with, right?

(He's better at it than you are.)

"We could, but you'd just kill me again," is your response.

"huh... i must've gotcha then. thought you'd be a _little_ more pissed though." Sans winks at you, then pauses for a moment. He tilts his head to the side, contemplating. "well, if you came back anyway... i guess that means we never really _were_ friends, huh?"

Stabbing you in the back (literally) is one thing, especially considering you'd done something similar to him. You can understand that; approve of it, even. This is another. _This,_ you take offense to. 

Just because you've become a shitty example of an individual capable of compassion doesn't mean you were always this way, and it doesn't discredit what you've done in the past. _All_ your actions stay with you, even if the good has long since been outweighed by the bad. You were friends once, and even though there's no proof of it, it happened. In another life, separated not by place but by timeline. This Sans might not have been then, but he is fully aware of it. Lunch at Grillby's... dinner at MTT Hotel... breakfast on the surface... it all happened. You know it did; you're the only one who could; you're the only one who can never forget. The timeline resets, but those memories don't; you're nothing if not a sack of flesh tied down by recollection and regret. That's what you've been doing all this time: picking up bits and pieces from different timelines. Storing them away for later. Sans would never be this mean to a friend, so you stopped being nice to see this side of him. Saying that none of that ever mattered, that you were _never friends_ discredits every scrap of data you've gathered thus far, which means all of this... all your efforts are for naught. And you _refuse_ to believe that.

You have to take a moment to breathe--slowly, deliberately; in through the nose, out through the mouth--before you've worked up enough composure to respond. You smile irritably, because that's what he's doing, because that's the best counter you've got to his digs.

"What was I supposed to do? Stay dead forever, and leave you here all by your lonesome? I'm not that cruel."

What comes out is a little less sincere and a little more spiteful than you'd intended, but you can work with sardonic. It suits you.

"heheheh... you're not?"

His eyes go empty.

"T h e n  w h y  d i d  y o u  k i l l  t h e m  a l l ?" 

You're slammed against the ground with the sensation of blue, the sudden surge of gravity catching you off-guard in the middle of his sentence. There's a loud _crack!_ and you see your knife skitter across the floor, rusted metal screeching; reflexively, you reach out towards it with your dominant hand, but stop when it comes into your line of vision. Your fingers are bent at awkward angles, and there's bone smashed through skin, to the point where you can easily see white jutting out. A small splotch of blood and bone bits denotes the point of impact. You realize what the source of the noise was.

Sans' magic is everywhere, pressing down upon you with even more force. It hangs in the air like a thunderstorm, so thick you can taste it, static and cyanide mingling on your tongue. He pushes harder, until you can't move anymore; you can breathe, but it comes out shallow, your lungs pressed too tight to your chest for anything deep. It feels like he's trying to suffocate you, but barely. Like there's something holding him back.

You look at him, his left eye blazing. He's not so short from this angle. He's bigger, meaner, more intimidating. More edges to him, somehow, and that's an odd thought, considering you've always seen him as rounded and soft. (Or as a glowing blur at the corner of your eye, when you're fighting.) One of his hands rests in his pocket, as usual; the other hovers parallel to the ground, restricting your movement. You're not entirely sure if the stance is necessary for his magic or if he just does it to help him concentrate and visualize his attacks. His smile is sharp at the edges, his face contorted in abrupt anger. It's disconcerting. You hadn't anticipated this extreme a reaction, but then again, he's normally a pretty chill guy. You've only discerned so much about him. What sets him off and shakes his poise, besides the mention of Papyrus, does not, to your dismay, fall under that umbrella.

He's still standing at a distance, still wary. You narrow your eyes. Coward. It's not like you can hurt him now, whether he's across the room or up close and personal. (You'd prefer the latter. Because he'd get it over with quicker, you tell yourself.) You'd long since tossed any spare weapons from your inventory; considering how fast-paced this battle usually is, it's more practical to carry things that can fix up your injuries. You can't even say that wasn't a sound decision, because he's never tried doing this to you. (Then again, you'd been decidedly lacking in the banter up until recently. You think maybe next time you reload your save, you should shut up and fight.)

"Blue and yellow... You're so indecisive. Why don't you hurry up and pick one?" You call out to him, ignoring both his obvious advantage and the fact that monsters don't choose the color of their magic any more than you chose the color of your Soul. (Sanguine, shining faintly through your skin in battle like you've stuck your hand under a flashlight. If you had to give it an appearance, despite its incorporeal nature, you'd visualize it as a heart--the cartoon kind, rather than an anatomically accurate one. It's... a somewhat sentimental shape.)

"that's real funny, coming from you. tell me, why'd you do it? pretend to be friends with everyone in some other timeline, and then slaughter us all the next?"

"On second thought," you muse, "maybe it's better that they stay separate. Chartreuse is such an _ugly_ color."

The grip on your chest tightens, near where your Soul feels most concentrated. It's uncomfortable, to say the least, but your expression remains relaxed. You're not _weak_.

"you know, it's rude to ignore people when they're talking to you."

You suppose he intends to conduct an impromptu interrogation session. You can't blame him; how many times have you wanted to do the exact same thing to him? It's too bad if he actually expects you to comply. You empathize with the guy, but hey, you get what you give. That's only fair, right? No answers on his end, no answers on yours. Your lips are sealed even if he tries to pry them open with his cold, skeletal digits. (Not that you'd mind that much, admittedly--but that would mean admitting, and you're not doing any of that today.) What's the worst he can do, _disembowel_ you?  


"You know," you suggest, "it's rude to talk to people from far away. I can barely hear you from this distance."  


"nice try, kid," he drawls back, "but i'm not going anywhere near you. i like my ketchup exactly where it is."

"Oh, come on. Like I'd hurt you. Aren't we pals?"  


"nope," he says. "no, we're not."

"Let me rephrase that: I literally cannot harm you right now. I'm a little tied up."

"that was a stretch." He gestures, with his free hand, to your seemingly unbound body. No ropes here. 

"Alright, so I'm bad at puns. Throw me a bone here, will you?"

He does, straight to your face. 

(It's a very lovely femur. His generosity knows no bounds.)

Fortunately for you, monsters don't have unlimited magic reserves. Sans has to redirect magic into materializing the attack; consequently, the grip of his gravity lessens. Not so much that you can dash around the battlefield like an overcaffeinated hamster, or even just get to your feet, but enough that you're able to roll to the side--jostling, briefly, your broken wrist, whoops, you'd forgotten about that--and avoid the hit. The femur misses your head by milliseconds and embeds itself in the tile beside you with a _shrk!_ Quickly, while you still have movement, you reach for the knife with your non-dominant hand, but it's gone.

"i don't think so."

Gravity increases threefold. You feel your bones creak beneath the pressure. Despite it, you grin. The flesh of your bottom lip cracks and splits, blood leaking. It's even harder to breathe, but that's almost irrelevant.

(Maybe the air deprivation is getting to you.)

If you've got it bad, Sans has to be overexerting himself too. You've been at this long enough to suss out your limits, and you've got an educated guess at his. You'll find the crack in his magic and his defenses eventually. The more he pours into holding you into place, the less of anything else he'll be able to do.  


"You know you can't concentrate all your magic on blue like this and still have enough left over to kill me. You're gonna have to finish the job by hand."

"by _hand_ , huh?" 

He says it like he's considering something. You wonder what.

He lunges. 

You don't see it coming. 

(He's really got you in the palm of his hand today, doesn't he?)

There's bony fingers at your throat and they're clenching, constricting, _choking_. You can scarcely breathe, but you think that even if he wasn't wringing the air from your windpipe, you'd be out of breath. From fear or awe or something else, you're not entirely sure, but your eyes are wide, concentrated solely on the skeleton before you. Sans is _here_ , and he has your life literally at his fingertips, your pulse point racing beneath his palm.

It's... thrilling.  


Unconsciously, you try to swallow, but his grip is too tight.

"you nervous or something?"

You look away. You can't move your head--can scarcely move any part of your body--but you at least have control over your face. You don't want to let him know how much you're enjoying this. You refuse to let yourself be responsive, or, rather, let your responsiveness _show_. If your face is warm and your heart is racing... Well, you've recently had a bit of a workout, right? And death's no more than a small squeeze away. Anyone's heart would be pounding after that. You're completely justified in that much. At least, that's what you tell yourself to stave off the mortification.

(And dear _God_ , is there mortification.)

You feel your sins weighing on your neck in a somewhat more literal fashion than you're used to.

You hate this. You hate the embarrassment and the _shame_ and the _guilt_ creeping up your body along with the rush; you hate how shoddy your self control is; you hate how your hatred only seems to intensify it; and most of all, you hate yourself for the sensation in its entirety. You shouldn't be feeling this way. This is a life-or-death sensation, and you feel positively _giddy_. What the hell? Maybe try toning down the repulsiveness for once? Everyone (who's still kicking) knows you're a ruthless sack of shit, but this is a different type of fucked-up.

_This is ridiculous_ , you tell yourself. 

_He won't notice_ , you assure yourself. 

_He's Sans; of_ course _he will_ , you remind yourself.

There's skin-to-bone contact, his edges pressed harshly against you. Your Souls are close enough that he could probably reach out and pluck yours from your body if he put in the effort. There's no way he can't sense how bothered you are-- _you're_ hyper aware of it, after all, and Sans' middle name could be aware, if that were a font. The knowledge discomposes you even further.  


"Hurry up and kill me already," you spit, trying to cram the maximum amount of venom possible into your words. You've only got so much dignity, after all, and it's draining quicker than your vitality. 

However, it seems to have the opposite effect; despite his even stare, you get the feeling that he's laughing at you.

"i dunno, you seem pretty rattled. down to the _bone_ , even.i've never seen you like this before."

Sans, sharp as ever, has donned a smile that's more of a smirk than anything else.  


"What do you expect? You've never strangled me to death before. A novel experience for the whole family. Oh, wait, wrong word, sorry. Your family's dead already, I killed him."

In retaliation, Sans snaps one of your ribs beneath his left hand, the one not around your neck. You don't even flinch. One rib is nothing. If you're being honest, the prickle of his magic on your body is more of an irritant than a single broken bone.

"You're gonna have to do better than that," you breathe. "Last time you killed me was a lot worse."

"really," Sans says flatly, and without further comment, breaks another. And another.

"That's, uh, about a fifth? I think. I wasn't that great at biology in high school. "

"it's actually a sixth," Sans comments helpfully. "about to be a fourth."

_Snap_. 

_Snap_. 

_Snap_.

"This is kind of funny. You did pretty much the exact opposite last time." You'd follow it up with a chuckle, but you're not entirely sure how you're taking in enough air to talk.

"care to elaborate?" he asks, and cracks two at once.

"Speeding it up, I see."

Three, this time. He's not taking very kindly to your impertinence. You decide to give him his answer. It's a small tidbit, and besides, you mentioned it first.

"...yeah, sure. You hugged me, there were bones, and everything fell out. It was a mess."

It helps that you're not giving it to him straight. (You snirk inwardly at the mental phrasing. _Give it to him_.)

"no offense, kid, but you're shit at storytelling."

_Kid._ Last you checked, you were human.

(Someone out there's probably mistaken you for a demon. Close enough, you figure.)

That's just another barrier he's built between you, one where he pretends to be the big brother and you're the brat he's babysitting. It always sounded a bit off when he'd call you that when you're clearly _not_ , and while you don't know Sans' age (real plot twist there, missing basic facts about him), you doubt he's so much older than you that he can use the word unironically.

Frankly, you'd rather he see you as an adult. There's very little equal ground in such a relationship, as you're sure he's aware. It's all very deliberate of him, very convenient for him. When you were close, it let him shrug you off every time you approached him about something or other, because who trusts children with their secrets? Only a fool, and while Sans is an uncontested jester, he's too savvy to make that mistake. There's a reason why he'd never directly confronted you about the timelines before all this.

( _sometimes, when no one else is around..._  
_a flower appears and whispers things to him._  
_flattery..._  
_advice..._  
_encouragement..._

_...predictions._ ) 

(What a roundabout way of threatening a time traveler. Not for the first time, and, you're sure, not for the last, you tip a hat to Sans' shrewdness.)

Yeah, Sans is smart and all, but who expects a _kid_ to be particularly articulate, anyway? Unrealistic standards here, buddy.

"Cut me some slack. Not really in the best position for it." (Heh, _position_. It's the little things that matter. Your lips, numb by now, twitch.)

"hey, what's so funny?" He presses his thumb, extra firm, against your jugular; you still immediately. Without thinking, you hold your breath, before catching yourself, scolding yourself, scrambling to find composure and a comeback.

( _If I have_ one _piece of advice for you..._  
Don't.  
_Let his brother._  
_Find out_ anything _about you._

_Stay away from that guy._ )  


(Sorry, Flowey. Too little, too late.)

"How we're managing to have this conversation despite your hands on my fucking neck?" ( _Fucking_ neck--alright, that's enough. You decide to stop before you reach the maturity level of a sixth grader.)

"you look like you're enjoying it." 

"Even if I am--and I'm not saying I do--you sure you really want me to? I mean, I killed your brother and everything. Unless he didn't actually mean that much to you, in which case I apologize for presuming."

"careful. you almost sound like you _want_ me to kill you."  


( _Y o u  d i r t y  b r o t h e r  k i l l e r._ )

You roll your eyes. As if he hasn't done that 75 times already. As if you hadn't _asked for it_ ten minutes ago. Compelled it, even. What, did he expect you to beg for your life? _Pretty please_ , Sans, don't hurt me? Fuck that, you've got an infinite number of resets. Who cares about something as inconsequential as pain or fear? Those are just _feelings._ You've long since learned to shove those down. _He_ should be the one on his knees. The only power he has over you is physical, and he doesn't have enough of it to keep that advantage forever. 1 ATK, 1 DEF, LV 1. You're a human, made of mass and matter, and he's nothing but bones. 

If he'd pleaded with you, if he'd agreed to tell you everything, you might've started SPARING back in Snowdin. 

But he didn't, you didn't, and you're not about to give in now.

"I'm so scared," you proclaim dryly. "Please, stop threatening me."

His palm is burning blue when he slams it against the other side of your chest, singeing the skin and breaking half of the ribs on that side. You cough wetly. You think he's punctured a lung.

"sarcasm's not funny, kid."

He's right. Sarcasm is _fucking hilarious._

"That's your opinion," you say, Soul struggling to keep the sounds together. You're slowly dying, but he doesn't need to know that. "But, hey, you know what _is_ funny? Your brother didn't even put up a fight. He didn't want to."

"..."

"Even as he was turning to dust, he told me he believed I could 'be a better person.' That has to be a joke, right? Me? Better?"

"..."

"What a fucking idiot."

He smashes your skull in with a clenched fist. 

It's instant.


	5. sisyphus, crushed beneath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is somewhat rough and was edited minimally, mostly because my laptop died on the 20th and i couldn't get my hands on a computer until tuesday. and after that was thanksgiving. aaaaand then i ended up losing a part of this chapter and had to rewrite it (ugh). i might go back and tweak a few things later (and some very minimal edits to the previous chapters as well).
> 
> on the bright side, i made a no mercy fanmix! set in the same continuity/no mercy run as this fic, of course. here's the [8tracks](http://8tracks.com/dragonflame3333/god-s-gone-from-these-hallowed-halls) for listening, here's the [tracklist](http://ultimatemegane.tumblr.com/post/134165064329/gods-gone-from-these-hallowed-halls-a-playlist).  
> (apologies for the rather uninspired cover art. i am not an artist.)

This is how it goes:

 

The 77th time, you’re angry. Though successfully goading Sans--getting under his nonexistent skin--runs a spark of amusement through you, you're not so arrogant as to believe that you'd had the upper hand in that round. You'd still died, and on top of that...

(On top of _you_ , more like.)

Even thinking about his actions draws out heat from your body, and that irritates you to no end. There’s a flame lit within you of reddened cheeks and torches carried. With it, you burn off the leftover humiliation. You’re going to set him on fire and watch him burn. You’ll smear his ashes across your face and henceforth it’ll never be anything other than grey.

You throw yourself at Sans, wild. Your knife shines, the metal reflecting the light of his magic and intensifying it to a hard glint. Again and again, you strike; again and again, he hits you, but you simply shrug it off. Offense is the best defense, after all. You’re sharp, _sharp_ , and if you could get him once, he’d be down, no need to count. He can’t last forever.

(He doesn’t need to. He only has to outlast _you_.)

Before long, he’s skewered you with bones, made a human pincushion out of you, and you’re bent out of shape and bleeding out. You clutch at your wounds with one hand and lunge at him with the other, but no amount of fury or determination can change the fact that it’s time for your body to give up and your mind to reload.

 

The 78th time, death comes as a surprise. It's not flashy or gruesome, like plenty of your other deaths have been. It’s nothing much. It’s all the little things–your impatience and the reluctance to rest it brings; the bones he leaves bouncing on the ground and twirling through the air of their own accord, rhythmic and half-unseen; the little hops through time that catch you off-guard by the tiniest bit and leave you too disoriented to duck beneath the next attack, even though his attacks themselves are nothing much; the various abrasions you get from hitting just the edge of his attacks; all seemingly inconsequential things building up over time. It’s a hundred tiny brands sunk shallow into your skin, deep into your Soul; splinters stuck along the length of your existence until that, too, begins to splinter. You’re so absorbed in the violence that you don’t notice your essence disintegrating until your vision starts to black. You scream at the injustice: your limbs are still intact, you can still move, you can still fight! What kind of _utter fucking bullshit_ –

The void claims you and your indignity.

 

The 79th time, you plunge into the fray with such fervor and fury that, when the time comes, Sans doesn’t even bother to offer a truce, and instead hits you with a surprise attack–it’s in your eye, it’s in your _fucking eye!_ This can't be ignored like other trauma; it doesn’t just hurt, it feels _wrong._ Eyes are squishy and delicate and sensitive and you've only got two of them and once they're gone-- _shit_ , you can’t see anything on that side anymore. You have to remove the intruder, even if that means carving it out. The skin of your palm and fingers bruises and burns when you grab whatever’s lodged in there (you think it might have been one of the small hand bones, but that’s tangential) and fling it back at him with a howl–of anger anguish agony all of the above. The way he effortlessly dissolves it (it’s his magic, what’d you expect?) aggravates you further. _Fuck you, you were supposed to stop and ask me for a hug!_ you think bitterly, clutching at your ruined eye, uselessly trying to staunch the blood streaming down your face.

That’s when he gets you: a blast straight to your blind spot.

 

The 80th time, you take a deep breath before you step forward. Unbridled rage isn’t working, you can tell that much. You empty yourself. Press your hands to your face, your cheeks, your eyes. Stretch. Crack your bones. Smile. It doesn’t hurt if you don’t care. Just distance yourself from it all, and you’ll do fine. Sans is the bone he commands, brittle. You are the steel you wield, unyielding. He thinks he can hurt you? He thinks he can break you? He truly is a jokester. No wonder Mettaton let him do gigs at his five-star hotel; he must have been a hit. Time to return the favor. You’re filled with LOVE, and plenty of it’s directed towards him. Pain is nothing. Killing him is nothing.

Ten minutes later, Sans slams your body into the ceiling. Your neck snaps like it's nothing.

You decide you hate him.

 

The 81st time, you’re careful not to touch, not to let him touch; the more you distance yourself, the less it hurts. You keep yourself away mentally and physically, except when attacking. Then, for just one second, you let yourself feel all the negative emotion you've held after dozens upon dozens of deaths. You channel all your feelings–anger, frustration, killing intent–into your strike. He’s gotta feel it in his bones every time you come at him. Monsters are weak to bloodlust, and oh, are you thirsty. But the blade cuts both ways, kid; when you’ve got your knife in the air and you’re coming down swinging, fangs and Soul bared simultaneously, that’s the moment you’re most vulnerable.

It goes without saying that Sans takes advantage of that second of susceptibility as swiftly as he can–because otherwise, you’re not just gonna stand there and take it, right?

 

The 82nd time you die, it’s because you’re so busy avoiding one laser that you don’t notice that another is aimed slightly away from you, rather than directly towards you. You step to dodge and end up walking straight into it, and are gone before the second is out.

Well, at least it was quick.

 

The 83rd time you die, you’re nibbling at a sandwich and shaking sweat from your brow when the _pop!_ of one of his space-time tricks reaches your ears and with it, row upon row of bones that you, unprepared, plow into in some painful, perverse imitation of bowling.

You should be proud of yourself; a more perfect strike has never been had.

(Bowling balls usually survive the crash. You’re the exception.)

 

The 84th time you die, you know it’s coming. The bruised flesh left by bones scraping along your side, the scorch marked skin from skulls erupting with bright white light. Traces of his magic left in your wounds sap at your Soul, HP by HP, until you’ve only one left. A sense of futility overtakes you.

(Now you know what Sans feels like all the time.)

Still, you fight.

Still, you lie.

 

The 85th time you die, it’s bang! bang! bang! and bone, bone, bone–he lifts a bony hand and you with it, crashing you into the bones he’s left on the walls, the pillars, the floor, the ceiling, until you can see your own bones poking out of you like gory white glass. He bounces you on them over and over; impaling you, breaking you, killing you.

You’re used to it.

 

The 86th time you die, you’re midway through the precursor to his so-called “special attack”; Sans flings your limp body through the air at breakneck speeds, and all you can do is curl up into a ball and pray to God that you don't plow through every one of his bones.

(God doesn't deal with those who have sinned as deeply as you.)

 

The 87th time you die, it's nearly identical to the one before it. How many more times will you face down this monster and fall? You've passed the point of irritation and crossed over into concern. There's no end in sight. Even Undyne the Undying, despite her name, only took about thirty downs of yours to die, although admittedly you had the advantage over her fighting style--fast and hard but manageable once you’d started to memorize which direction her arrows were coming from. Sans’ fight, however, is long and harrowing. You die at the same points, to the same set-ups, even when you think you're prepared. It's difficult. It's frustrating. You know it’s his intent, but that doesn’t stop it from being almost discouragingly tiring.

Almost. Dying is tedious, but death is boring.

 

The 88th time, you celebrate having reached such a cool number by rolling yourself in figure eights around him, swirling your body around with the power of your Soul in fluid, graceful curves. You stab at him in infinities. He notices, and, smirking as he’s wont to, kills you in eight(een) turns. Or maybe you let him kill you on the eighteenth. You’re not sure.

 

The 89th time you die, it doesn’t surprise you, even though you’d been doing pretty well up until then. The moment Sans starts tugging your body sideways, you swing in sine waves, undulating up and down to skirt--barely--skeletal stalagmites and stalactites. Wind, so out of place indoors, howls in your ears, loud as a banshee. The scrape of bones rattle along your back; the sting of his magic follows, venom trickling steadily into your veins. You see a wall in front of you and brace for impact. You land and leap immediately, knowing his tricks.

Then he throws lasers into the equation, and you've always been bad with those.

You die. What a plot twist.

You'd already died 88 times. You're basically expecting it at this point. If you can last a few seconds longer, that's cool. If not, well... you can't say your expectations have been shattered. You understand that you shouldn’t think negatively, especially when your strongest weapon is your DETERMINATION, but…

continued failure…

makes it kind of hard to give it your all.

 

The 90th time you die, you begin to miss when it only took you a few seconds to die. Sure, it means you’re making progress and aren’t as shitty as you used to be, but it’s draining as hell. These days (hours? minutes? those words are meaningless), it takes a lot longer for him to best you.

 

The 91st time you die, you wonder whether you’ll be able to kill him before you reach 100. You decide to make it an unofficial goal.

 

The 92nd time you die, you’re not sure if it was lasers or bones this time. It’s all started to blur together.

 

The 93rd time you die, you realize 100 is too lofty a goal. Maybe 125 is more realistic.

 

The 94th time you die, you wonder if it’d be pathetic or admirable, in a deplorable way, if you make it past the 100 mark.

(Mostly, though, you’re just disgusting.)

 

The 95th time you die…

(Why can’t you beat him? It shouldn’t be that hard. He’s so weak.)

 

The 96th time you die…

(You’re such a piece of shit. You can’t even get past an enemy with 1HP. )

 

The 97th time you die…

(It’s because good always wins. You’re corrupt, you know. You don’t deserve victory.)

 

The 98th time you die…

(Fuck that. You’ll do whatever you want. Good doesn’t exist. Evil doesn’t exist. All there is is you and him and his judgment and your blood-lust.)

 

The 99th time you die…

(You're a failure. You should just stay dead.)

 

The 100th time you die…

( _hey, congrats! the big one-oh!_ …oh.)

 

Time to take a break.


	6. ophiuchus couldn't tame the ourosboros

You are sick of dying.

Or, wait--you're sick in general. You're sick of it all, and you'll be sick forevermore. It's not the sensation of bile rising up your throat anymore. Shallow upheaval cannot help you now. Go ahead, vomit; this wrongness is not there. It's _you_ that's tainted. It's spread so far within that you can't cut it out. You're too far gone.

(Sans already tried that, remember?)

You're the blighted tree, blackened and stiff, roots planted firmly but core decaying within. There's nothing left but the shell of what once was--that, and the still-sharp, still-spiteful thorns jutting from your ruined self. You're sick, and you're sickening, and those you touch will fall to ruin. Your breath blows, your scratches septic, you've a Soul so diseased it can't be assed to die like it should and a heart so contaminated with LOVE you can't tell right from wrong anymore.

Maybe you're not alive. Maybe you never could.

You could've died in the fall. You're no amnesiac; you remember what happened. You know for what purpose you climbed that mountain.

(Nobody climbs Mt. Ebott and expects a happy ending.)

It had been a beautiful day outside. The sun shone brightly, the light warm and welcoming; the birds flitted from pine to pine, their songs echoing through the treetops; the flowers swayed in the light breeze, enraptured by the liveliness of mid-May.

You'd hiked, your ascent sluggish but steady.

Tread flowers beneath your booted feet; startled birds silenced by the snap of branches; a dwindling sun creeping its way under the horizon.

You'd fallen, your descent quick but slower than you'd imagined.

The next memory you have is of waking up in a flowerbed, dazed and confused.

You recall the sensation of free falling--watching the clouds grow smaller and smaller and your clothes rippling with the wind. But the moment of impact escapes you. It's the only thing you've forgotten since you fell.

Perhaps this is just a fever dream, some sort of cruel joke the universe is playing on you as you bleed out on the dirty ground. That's a sin, isn't it? This is God's punishment, isn't it?

Or perhaps there's something else within you, some entity of malice and _determination_ animating your tired body, patching up the wounds and going through the motions, again, again. Maybe you really aren't you anymore. Maybe you fell and broke and grew back wrong, some intrinsic element to being a _person_ lost. Or maybe it was a gradual thing, a little more of you lost every time you die. A slow consumption, a metamorphosis from human to something unmentionable. A parasitic thing, growing, crawling in your innards, blooming from your bruised flesh. You envision yourself choking up roses, doubling up in a flurry of painfully red petals.

You hold your hand to your face, imagine a mirror, imagine your reflection. What changed?

...Nothing, of course.

(You're not Flowey, after all.)

Come on, cut the bullshit. You can't blame your own faults on some imaginary demon.

You still _feel_. You have a Soul. It may be rotten, but it's there.

No, you're human, through and through, with all of the ugly flaws of humanity laid bare. You've got all the classical ones, plus hypocrisy, guilt, deceit...

You're ravenous for knowledge, where you'll go to any depths to learn. So you destroy, you break everything, you kill kill _kill_. You want to destroy everything: your enemies, your friends, your love, yourself. You've tried other approaches, but murder's the one that brings the most drastic results.

That's not enough, though; you want it both ways. You want to be enemies and friends with everyone; you want to just reload like what you've done doesn't count, no harm done! No one remembers, so it's okay.

(It doesn't work like that.)

You do it all for yourself. It's all about what _you_ want, isn't it? Shouldn't you be a little more considerate from time to time? You could start by, you know, letting people live their lives--or even just _live_.

Then you have the gall to feel _bad_ about it (as if that helps). You remember companionship, and you want it. You're envious of Sans, for being in power, for knowing things that you don't, for his goddamn high horse. Of Undyne, the heroine, for whose cause countless hearts had beat in unison, people looking up to her. Of Papyrus, for being pure and kind, for his love (the true, untainted kind) of others and of _himself_. Of Mettaton, admired by all, adored by all, wanted by all. Even poor Alphys, haunted by her mistakes yet dealing with them as best she can, strikes a note of jealousy in you.

It's all about you, in the end. If you help others, it's to gratify yourself. You're a kid with a dollhouse, playing make-believe. You keep writing stories where you're the main character because that's the only way you'll ever be important. You're a selfish bastard, and you'll win, and that's the end of that. Sans is winning but... he won't be for forever. You'll win. You always win. (Cocky, aren't you?)

You're ready to see blood spill that isn't your own, for once.

(Monsters don't bleed, but the sentiment stands.)

And when you finally kill him, you'll...

you'll...

what?

You'll deal with that later. What matters is that you have a set goal for now. One thing at a time, right? Otherwise, you end up with too much on your plate, and then you don't deal with anything at all. Your balance is getting better, but it's not perfect.

...Nice try, but really. Think about it a moment.

Sans' death. The pressure of your knife against his vertebrae. The rumble of his last words. The softness of his dust spilling between your fingers. After experiencing that, will you be satisfied? Will you finally find whatever it it you're looking for?

What are you looking for, anyway?

'Knowledge.'

'Power.'

'Love.'

Excuses. Those are just empty words.

Do you even know anymore?

If it's knowledge you're looking for, you've learned plenty from the fight. Sans knows about timelines. He can't time travel, but he can monitor the time-space continuum and fuck with it to some extent. He's been tracking your progress, and he's aware of what you've done.

It's doubtful he'll tell you what his deal is after he's dead. (And even if he could... why _would_ he?)

If it's power you crave, you've got plenty of it. Sure, you'll gain some by dusting him, but does it really matter at this point? You've pretty much got enough LV to kill with a glance. It's already overkill.

You get the feeling that even if you were to land a mortal blow on Sans, you still wouldn't be entirely in control. The thought irritates you.

And if it's love you want, you _really fucked up_ there.

After what you've done, who could possibly love you?

(Not even Flowey, and he's been at this a lot longer than you.)

Romance is not in the cards. The fortuneteller's told you as much, and as usual, you're stuck on his words.

There's one thing in particular that irks you.

_'until suddenly, everything ends.'_

You've heard it so many times. What does it mean?

How could he possibly know what you're going to do? you don't even know yourself. What could possibly happen once you finish this run? Why would everything suddenly end?

You don't understand. You want to understand.

"you can't understand," he says, all melancholic and melodramatic.

(Who is he to decide?)

"everything ends," he says, and it's all your fault.

(Who is he to predict?)

"you'll never be happy," he says, and it's an appraisal, a decree rather than an opinion.

(Who is he to judge?)

Sans can't know the future. He doesn't know anything at all.

You'll kill him.

Will that make you happy?

Sure it will! After all, you've been trying so hard...

Won't revenge be sweet?

(That must be why Sans is always smiling! He's been looking forward to your death all this time. All this time. Isn't that great for him? He gets to avenge his brother over and over.)

You'll be happy. You'll be absolutely fucking _ecstatic_. You'll be smiling so hard that your lips will split and leak ketchup down your face. You'll clap your hands at the sight of his ash, cremated in the fires of your love-hate, flint and _steel_ palmed. You'll steal his jacket, and it will be fluffy and comfy and everything you've ever wanted.

And after, the after, the end.

The end of what? The end of everything, says the judge.

You won't settle for anything less than a perfect finale.

Fine, Sans. Have it your way! You'll make it true.

It'll be a self fulfilling prophecy, and you'll drag him down with you. It _was_ his idea.

You can picture it now. You and him, together. Holding hands at each others' throats. Scrabbling at the others' bones. Twined together like ivy on a tree, constricting tight, tighter, yet tighter--only, you're not sure which one of you is the tree and which one the vines. (Does it matter?) It's an awfully familiar premise, but with the coin flipped; you'll be calling the shots, and humanity's the first target in your sights. And after, that, oh... you'll have some _fun_. You're ambitious, and that's okay! As long as you've got the determination to back it up.

The world will crumble at your fingertips.

Sans will have to die first, but that's not a problem. Monsters don't have souls as durable as humans, but you think you can work something out. Absorbing his Soul is too risky; he'd have a will of his own, and you don't want to make the same mistake as Flowey. No, there's another way to keep a part of him with you. His essence, rather than his Soul. What was that quaint little tradition of theirs again?

(You can't wait to have his sand on your skin.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> been having some Bad Times of a less enjoyable variety lately. apologies for any deficiencies in timeliness or quality.


End file.
